Inhoudsopgave:
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A collection of essays from the author of Same-Sexy Marriage. âA painfully honest but beautiful journey . . . Heartfelt and hopefulâ (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).  This is a daughterâs story. In Small Fires, Julie Marie Wade recreates the landscape of her childhood with a lacemakerâs care, then turns that precise attention on herself. There are floating tea lights in the bath, coddled blossoms in the garden, and a mother straddling her teenage daughterâs back, astringent in hand, to better scrub her not-quite-presentable pores. And throughout, Wade traces this lost world with the same devotion as her mother among her award-winning roses. Small Fires is essay as elegy, but it is also essay as parsing, reconciliation, and celebration, all in the attempt to answer the questionâwhat have you given up in order to become who you are?  âReckoning with imperfect parentsâwhat they owe us and what we owe themâis one of the chief tasks of these essays, which form a kind of pointillistic autobiography. Another is the construction of memories, even imagined, in which understanding and forgiveness trump judgment and hate . . . Throughout, the writing is sharp, surprising, and precise.â âThe Boston Globe  âIn Small Fires, Julie Marie Wade . . . considers family and memory with a poetic eye and unabashed tongue . . . [It] is Julie Marie Wadeâs story, but the collection opens onto something universalâhow we individuate from our family, how we become ourselves, what we carry forward from our pasts and make our own.â âLambda Literary  âA book of essays that left me transfixed and transformed through brilliant prose and ideas. Itâs like finding a time capsule of nostalgic treasures.â âBrevity |
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